Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ to the door and stood on the threshold. Out of the darkness of the room came the voice of Christopher Carrion, deep and joyless.

      “Enter, enter. You’re just in time to watch the feeding.”

      Houlihan followed the sound of Carrion’s voice. There was a flickering in the darkness, which grew more intense by degrees, and as it brightened he saw the Lord of Midnight standing perhaps ten yards from him. He was dressed in gray robes and was wearing gloves that looked as though they were made of fine chain mail.

      “Not many people get to see this, Criss-Cross Man. My nightmares are hungry, so I’m going to feed them.” Houlihan shuddered. “Watch, man! Don’t stare at the floor.”

      Reluctantly, the Criss-Cross Man raised his eyes. The nightmares Carrion had spoken of were swimming in a blue fluid, which all but filled a high transparent collar around Carrion’s head. Two pipes emerged from the base of the Lord of Midnight’s skull, and it was through these that the nightmares had emerged, swimming directly out of Carrion’s skull. They were barely more than long threads of light; but there was something about their restless motion, the way they roved the collar, sometimes touching Carrion’s face, more often pressing against the glass, that spoke of their hunger.

      Carrion reached up into the collar. One of the nightmares made a quick motion, like a striking snake, and delivered itself into its creator’s hand. Carrion lifted it out of the fluid and studied it with a curious tenderness.

      “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Carrion said. Houlihan didn’t comment. He just wanted Carrion to keep the thing away from him. “But when these things are coiled in my brain they show me such delicious horrors.” The nightmare writhed around in Carrion’s hand, letting out a thin, high-pitched squeal. “So every now and then I reward them with a nice fat meal of fear. They love fear. And it’s hard for me to feel much of it these days. I’ve seen too many horrors in my time. So I provide them with someone who will feel fear.”

      So saying, he let the nightmare go. It slithered out of his grip, hitting the stone floor. It knew exactly where it was going. It wove across the ground, flickering with excitement, the light out of its thin form illuminating its victim: a large, bearded man squatted against the wall.

      “Mercy, my Lord…” he sobbed. “I’m just a Todo miner.”

      “Oh, now be quiet,” Carrion said as though he were speaking to a troublesome child. “Look, you have a visitor.”

      He turned and pointed to the ground where the nightmare slithered. Then, without waiting to see what happened next, he turned and approached Houlihan. “So, now,” he said. “Tell me about the girl.”

      Thoroughly unnerved by the fact that the nightmare was loose and might at any moment turn on him, Houlihan fumbled for words: “Oh yes…yes…the girl. She escaped me in Ninnyhammer. Along with a geshrat called Malingo. Now they’re traveling together. And I got close to them again on Soma Plume. But she slipped away among some pilgrim monks.”

      “So she’s escaped you twice? I expect better.”

      “She has power in her,” Houlihan said by way of self-justification.

      “Does she indeed?” Carrion said. As he spoke he carefully lifted a second nightmare out of his collar. It spat and hissed. Directing it toward the man in the corner, he let the creature go from his hands, and it wove away to be with its companion. “She must at all costs be apprehended, Otto,” Carrion went on. “Do you understand me? At all costs. I want to meet her. More than that. I want to understand her.”

      “How will you do that, Lord?”

      “By finding out what’s ticking away in that human head of hers. By reading her dreams, for one thing. Which reminds me…Lazaru!”

      While he waited for his servant to appear at the door, Carrion brought out yet another nightmare from his collar and loosed it. Houlihan watched as it went to join the others. They had come very close to the man, but had not yet struck. They seemed to be waiting for a word from their master.

      The miner was still begging. Indeed he had not ceased begging throughout the entire conversation between Carrion and Houlihan. “Please, Lord,” he kept saying. “What have I done to deserve this?”

      Carrion finally replied to him. “You’ve done nothing,” he said. “I just picked you out of the crowd today because you were bullying one of your brother miners.” He glanced back at his victim. “There’s always fear in men who are cruel to other men.” Then he looked away again, while the nightmares waited, their tails lashing in anticipation. “Where’s Lazaru?” Carrion said.

      “Here.”

      “Find me the dreaming device. You know the one.”

      “Of course.”

      “Clean it up. I’m going to need it when the Criss-Cross Man has done his work.” His gaze shifted toward Houlihan. “As for you,” he said. “Get the chase over with.”

      “Yes, Lord.”

      “Capture Candy Quackenbush and bring her to me. Alive.”

      “I won’t fail you.”

      “You’d better not. If you do, Houlihan, then the next man sitting in that corner will be you.” He whispered some words in Old Abaratian. “Thakram noosa rah. Haaas!”

      This was the instruction the nightmares had been waiting for. In a heartbeat they attacked. The man struggled to keep them from climbing up his body, but it was a lost cause. Once they reached his neck they proceeded to wrap their flickering lengths around his head, as though to mummify him. They partially muffled his cries a little, but he could still be heard, his appeals for mercy from Carrion deteriorating into shrieks and screams. As his terror mounted the nightmares grew fatter, giving off brighter and brighter flashes of sickly luminescence as they were nourished. The man continued to kick and struggle for a while, but soon his shrieks declined into sobs and finally even the sobs ceased. So, at last, did his struggle.

      “Oh, that’s a disappointment,” Carrion said, kicking the man’s foot to confirm that fear had indeed killed him. “I thought he’d last longer than that.”

      He spoke again in the old language, and—nourished, now, and slothful—the nightmares unknotted themselves from around their victim’s head and began to return to Carrion. Houlihan couldn’t help but retreat a step or two in case the nightmares mistook him for another source of food.

      “Go on, then,” Carrion said to him. “You’ve got work to do. Find me Candy Quackenbush!”

      “It’s as good as done,” Houlihan replied, and without looking back, even a glance, he hurried away from the chamber of terrors and down the stairs of the Twelfth Tower.

       PART ONE FREAKS, FOOLS AND FUGITIVES

      Nothing

      After a battle lasting many ages, The Devil won, And he said to God (who had been his Maker): “Lord, We are about to witness the unmaking of Creation By my hand. I would not wish you to think me cruel, So I beg you, take СКАЧАТЬ